Flow can’t be simulated. There’s a fundamental reason why this is so and that is because flow isn’t a thing and only things can be simulated. A thing can only be a thing if it is completely ‘bounded’ (or circumscribed’); if it’s not a thing then we can’t define it, and if we can’t define it then we can’t simulate it.
To be a thing is to be ‘wholly contained within a formal description’ – a thing is only a thing when it can be wholly accounted for by an approved set of criteria, when it can be slotted into a ready-made category and what this means is that a thing IS a category. We’re relating to our own mental categories as if they were actual entities populating the outside world. There are no things, in other words – things are only thoughts.
Despite this, when we live on the basis of thought then all we can believe in are things – if it isn’t a thing then we simply can’t relate to it. When we talk in terms of fully-boundaried self-contained ‘units’ (of whatever) we’re utilizing a convention that we adopt for the same convenience, as a short of kind of time-saving short-hand to decide describe what’s going on (otherwise it would take us forever to talk about anything and we’d still never get to the bottom of it). Alan Watts uses the concept of thelap as an example of this – it’s convenient to talk in terms of laps in everyday life but that doesn’t mean that there actually are any. ‘A lap’ is an oversimplification and by using the word unreflectively we create what Robert Anton Wilson refers to as ‘a semantic spook’. What we’re doing when we live on the basis of thought is that we’re using semantic spooks (or ‘word ghosts’) to derive a fundamental level of meaning that we use to create a foundation which to create an entire system. We can ‘print’ (or ‘manufacture’) these spooks at precisely zero cost to ourselves so what’s to stop us?
All thoughts are conventions in this exact sense and the systems we build – despite the great authority they carry (for us) – can never be any more than a simulation, can never be any more than an ‘act’ or ‘show’. We construct for ourselves a world that is entirely made up of things – if it isn’t a thing then we have no time for it (not being a thing means not existing) but ‘all things are thoughts’ (as we’ve just said) and if all things are thoughts then this means that the world we live in and put all our hopes in, is just some kind of shared content-less notion that we have in our heads. We band together to say that it’s real and then stubbornly refuse to admit that this is what we’ve done. That’s how come everything gets to be so watertight, so resistant to interrogation. Our structures are protected by violence.
Going back to what we started off by talking about – the simulation can’t simulate flow, but it can simulate things and so what it does is to simulate a whole lot of things and then set up some kind of situation where these things appear to move, appear to flow. This is what we call linear (or predictable) change – for all that ‘predictable’ change is clearly an oxymoron. On the superficial level, we could say that simulated flow looks like flow but when we investigate the matter further we find that as this is just an effect, an effect that is caused by getting a bunch of unchanging things to move ‘relative to the static framework that has been assumed’. This is ‘provisional’ movement therefore – it’s legitimately classifiable as ‘movement’ just as long as we take it for granted that the framework that we’ve assumed is ‘an actual fixture in reality’ and not an empty notion that has been agreed upon. It’s legitimate if we put these conditions on it, but otherwise not.
The level of description we’re working from is one in which ‘things’ (of one sort or another) are fundamental to existence (rather than just being inventions / constructs). Our basis for assessing the world is thusfalse – it’s false since all we know (when we’re adapted to thought’s picture of things) is what the world looks like when it’s interpreted in terms of categories that we say exist when – actually – they don’t. We’re dealing with a purely hypothetical situation therefore – we’re dealing with the situation which would come into being if the criteria we use to evaluate incoming data weren’t inventions on our part (or – as we could also say – the type of situation that would be true if the psychological projections with which we paint the world weren’t ‘projections’ but something that is in fact ‘already there’. This is our assumption for sure, but what we may (or may not) assume is never going to influence reality. ‘Pissing against the wind’ doesn’t come into it…
When thought projects a reality then this is technically an assumption but it’s not one that we are aware of; it’s not the sort of assumption that any consciousness behind it, only blind, heedless mechanics. Whatever is projected is believed, automatically, as a matter of course, without there ever being any real possibility of ‘philosophical doubt’ on our part. There is zero discernment on our part – we buy into whatever is shown to us in regardless of what that might be, regardless of any other considerations whatsoever. This is what’s meant by ‘one thing mechanically following another’ – a machine never questions what it is doing! There is no intelligence operating here, no sensitivity, no awareness of the bigger picture – only blind senseless ‘copying’, only pointless never-ending repetition. This isn’t a ‘version’ of (or ‘variant’ on) reality but a red herring pure and simple; mechanical activity is a dead end, a blind alley that’s good for distracting or bamboozling ourselves, but – sadly – good for nothing else.
The only thing that ISN’T a blind alley or dead end is the Flow and that – as we keep saying – can’t be simulated. All we’ve got when we simulate flow are a collection of rules and rules are always dead ends. Rules are the antithesis of flow – nothing flows when there are rules involved. The problem here therefore is this: How do we create ‘flow’ out of dead ends? How do we bring about change on the basis of static elements (and when – even more to the point – when those static elements are themselves purely hypothetical? This isn’t ‘a problem’ – it’s pure impossibility. It’s nonsense. Hence, Alan Watts defines Samsara as “…an endlessly repetitious attempt to solve a false problem.” Our constant repetitive efforts to ‘fix a false problem’ (to ‘solve a non-existent issue’) is what we know as life. What we call ‘success’ clearly means success in self-deception – it couldn’t mean anything else.
In response to this question as to how we are to turn an endless series of dead ends (or false starts) into a bone fide highway (a road that actually goes somewhere) we would have to say “Certainly not by any honest means” – lies and deception are the only way. What thought does to accomplish this is that it keeps repeating these dead ends (or false starts) in various rhythmically fluctuating patterns to create a picture which seems to contain moving elements (in the very same way that the static screen on an android phone seems to contain moving elements).
The ‘dead ends’ that we’re talking about here are literal signifiers and logic systems can’t deal in anything other than ‘literal signifiers’. The system can’t handle nuances, in other words. A literal statement is a dead end precisely because it is literal in its nature – ‘literal’ means that it can’t go beyond itself and saying that it ‘can’t go beyond itself’ is another way of saying that literal signifiers actually only signify themselves. There is absolutely no way this can’t be a dead end, therefore. The logical signs or signifiers are therefore like pixels on a visual display screen blanks that go to simulate moving picture. Pixels – of course – work their magic on a screen by turning on and off so as to produce the illusion of movement – each particular pixel is itself a dead end because there’s nothing beyond it, because it only ever leads back to itself. The individual pixel itself is the ‘ultimate level of resolution’, in other words. This disqualifies it from being real, we might say – in order for something to be real it has to be in unbroken communication with everything that is not it – it has to be part of a greater whole (rather than being ‘a thing in itself’, or ‘an end in itself’). If it’s not ‘part of the Whole’ then it’s just a fabrication, it’s just flyshit on the lens of the telescope that we’re looking through, flyshit which we mistakenly take to be a feature of what we’re looking at.
If what we’re looking at is ‘connected to the bigger picture’ (if it has unqualified interaction with everything that’s around it) then we can say that it is ‘in flight’ rather than being ‘tied down’. We can say that the element under consideration is ‘part of the Flow’ but at the same time we can’t know anything about this flow – we can’t ever know what it is that we’re saying! The key property of flow – as we keep saying – is that we can’t in any way define it, and what this is another way of saying that we can’t perceive it in terms of any sort of representation. Reality can’t be represented to us and thus there is no way that it can in any way ‘register’ for us when we’re operating on the provisional basis of the Thinking Mind; we are flatly incapable of relating to reality when we’re in Rational Mode, and there’s no way to spin this so it doesn’t come across as being utterly and completely bizarre. ‘It’s not clever to be clever’, says Gurdjieff. The Flow is all there is and yet we all function in our day-to-day lives by implicitly deny that there is such a thing; we set up shop without this essential ingredient, we are fantastically ‘oblivious’ to our own colossal folly and if anyone were to ever try to draw attention to the fact we would pour scorn on them. “When a foolish person hears of the Tao, he laughs out loud at the very idea. If he didn’t laugh, it wouldn’t be the Tao.” – Verse 4, Tao Te Ching (Byrne translation). We are fools who think themselves wise, and when we come across those who are not ‘wise’ in the way we imagine ourselves to be, it is our pleasure to persecute and abuse them to the very limit of our ability….
Image credit – doornob.com